VIRTUAL REALITY OCCUPATIONAL SAFETY TRAINING: A REVIEW

This paper reviews research in the field of Virtual Reality (VR) training to determine how VR can adequately prepare employees for dangerous work environments. This paper focuses on how VR training can provide safety training to miners, firefighters and the military - three industries that present a significant risk to its employees. On average, in 2009, one miner died every day, and it is also estimated that sixteen workers are injured due to mining-related accidents every day (Van Wyk et al., 2009). These figures illustrate the importance of effective occupational safety training. Traditional classroom-based safety training does not offer the interactivity needed to prepare employees for dangerous work environments (Van Wyk et al., 2009). This review discovered that VR is a cost-effective solution that mitigates the issues present in traditional safety training. VR offers an immersive and interactive safety training solution that cannot be replicated in real life due to ethical or danger restrictions. Simulations of dangerous activities can provide employees with the tools to physically and mentally prepare themselves for dangerous work conditions. Compared to traditional training methods, it was observed that VR safety training provided significantly better results concerning learning outcomes and motivation. This paper then describes the future possibilities of developing a VR safety training system for the agricultural industry and how this systems training potential will be evaluated.